BANGALORE'S PETÉS ARE CHANGING YET AGAIN AS THE ORIGINAL INHABITANTS MOVE OUT AND OLD INSTITUTIONS CRUMBLE

Once upon a time, there was a man named Bannappa, who lived with his wife Venkamma and his three children in a small farm in Thumbinakatte, now a part of Karnataka's Davanagere district. Bannappa was a farmer, with his own small plot of land, but this was no guarantee of prosperity . It was the first decade of the 20th century , and rural poverty was guaranteed by irregular monsoons and regular droughts. Things went from bad to worse, and in 1908, Bannappa decided that there was no future in agriculture. He packed a few belongings, and along with his wife and sons, took a bullock cart to the city of Bengaluru, more than 250 kilometers away . After a month of travelling, Bannappa reached Bengaluru and settled down in Cubbonpete. The peté was at the centre of the city's textile industry , and Bannappa got himself a job as a weaver.

Old stories

Since the days of Kempegowda, the caste leaders functioned as police and judiciary for the petés they controlled. Inter-caste disputes were usually settled on terms favourable to the dominant castes. Even during the 19th century , when the Cantonment area gained in size and importance, much care was taken to ensure that there was very little contact between the Cantonment and the petés, with the latter falling under the control of the Maharaja. But the British also feared that the Maharaja of Mysore was leading the state into disaster, and Lord Bentinck decided that Mysore would be better off under direct British rule. One of the first things that Mark Cubbon did when he took over as the Commissioner of Mysore in 1934 was to establish a legal system based on courts, parallel to the caste-based panchayats.

The introduction of the British courts ­ and the decline in impor tance of the traditional caste-based courts had its own impacts on the petés, says Dr Narender Pani of NIAS, an authority on old Ben galuru. The traditional court etiquette involved highly embroidered, col ourful silks. With the arrival of the British, fashions changed and cotton clothing became more important. It also saw the decline in impor tance of the Banajiga community, who special ized in silk. Over the course of the 19th century, the Devangas, who specialized in cotton, gained promi nence.

The Silence of the Looms

Bannappa was a Devanga, and he found himself right at home. His arrival coincided with the arrival of cotton looms into the Cubbonpete area. Soon, the entire locality would reverberate to the sounds of the looms, a rhythmic clack-clack, not unlike the sound of a train on a bridge. Bannappa's son Chikkasangappa followed in his footsteps, and soon found himself diversifying.He became a raw silk trader, a move that reflected the growing dominance of trading over manufacturing that had taken place over the past century . He was soon buying raw silk by the pound from Ramnagaram and Kollegal and selling it in the markets of the area. In 1949, he bought a silk yarn twisting machine to move up the value chain. He had sons, and educated them. His eldest son, Banashankar, is the president of the Mysore Powerloom Society, and his second son, Varadaraju became an engineer. “The years between 1962 to 1985 were the best years for us. We got electricity too ­ when (BD) Jatti was the Chief Minister,“ says Banashankar.“We prospered, and the house expanded with us,“ he says. The house is typical of the old peté houses. The ground floor is over a century old. Additions were built, in 1967 and in the early 70s.

The petés are the human equivalent of a rabbit warren, and it's easy to get lost in the maze of houses and shops and alleys and markets. Space is a problem. Washing lies on doorsteps, wrung tight and left to dry in the pale Bengaluru sun. Most apartment complexes in Bengaluru have driveways wider than the Chickpete streets. Decadesold paint peels off century-old houses, constructed with a mixture of mud, jaggery and lime. The area is still vital, incredibly alive, but there are signs of neglect everywhere, from the cracked and muddy lanes to the piles of refuse rotting in corners.

“It all went downhill in the 1980s, though, when the silk exchanges were set up,“ says Banashankar. The exchanges were set up as a result of the 1979 amendment to the Mysore Silkworm Seed and Cocoon Act, which prohibited the sale of silk outside government-established exchanges. “That, and the entry of cheaper ­ and better quality Chinese silk really destroyed the silk trading business. We petitioned people at all levels of the government, all the way up to Rajiv Gandhi, but nothing has happened. Indian silk cannot compete with Chinese silk, it's more consistent, and since then, the silk trade has been declining,“ he says. “And as far as government support goes, we have been forgotten.“

The new century has not been good for Chickpete's residents. “It's all this focus on IT. The government has been busy developing areas like Jayanagar and Indira Nagar and Koramangala, while ignoring us,“ says Varadaraju. “The old residents have started
moving out, building additional floors on old homes that they rent out to a new generation of people who have little connection to the neighbourhood. The first thing these people did was to complain to the pollution control board about the noise of the looms, and they forced owners of the looms to relocate or shut down. I grew up to that sound,“ he says.Today , the only sounds you can hear are the sounds of building construction, and once in a long while, if you turn into an alley deep in the warren, you can hear a muted clackclacking.

Garadi Mane

Not far from Banashankar's house is a small building, one that looks like a temple.A dilapidated sign crowns the gateway , with the words Kodandarama Vyayama Shale mattu Bhajanamandali in large red letters.Underneath are the timings (belege: 5:00-8:30 sanje:4:00-9:00). Entering, you find yourself in a small courtyard, beyond which lies the garadi mane.

R Shanmugam is the secretary of the garadi mane. At 80 years of age, he has been here for a long time. Short and slender, he looks like he is from another era. His fullsleeved shirt is white and spotless and is not tucked in. His black trousers have a crease you can shave with. He holds himself erect, and despite his small size, you believe it when he says he was a wrestler when he was younger. “This used to be a popular place,
both for weightlifters and wrestlers,“ he says. There is no nostalgia in his tone, just a statement of fact and an acceptance of the way things are. It's not that the garadi mane charges much for membership ­ a nominal Rs 50 per month, up from Rs 2 fifty years ago.

The place has tried to change with the times. There's a lat-pulldown machine and a bench-press frame on the porch. Dumbbells are stacked on a nearby rack. The floor is red oxide, cracked, and pockmarked. A small green door leads to the heart of the garadi mane. The room is tiny , and divided in two by a low brick step. On one side is the audience area, its earthen floor worn smooth over the years. The other side is the wrestling ring, if such a term can be applied to the pile of soil where wrestlers once grappled under the light of a single fluorescent tube. “We used to have more than a hundred wrestlers here, once,“ says Shanmugam.“Now, there are fewer than forty , and there are hardly any matches held here anymore.“

Karnataka is Ramarajya

Naresh Jain sits in his shop in DS Lane, an alley undistinguishable from the hundreds of other alleys in Chickpete. Jain was born in Bengaluru, but it was his grandfather who first came here, back in 1935. Three years later, he sent for his son. Jain's father was twelve years old when he made the journey from Sheoganj in Rajasthan. It wasn't easy, back in 1938. The boy had to walk 10 kilometers from Sheoganj to the nearest railway station at Jawaibandh. From Jawaibandh, he took a train to Ahmedabad, another from Ahmedabad to Bombay , a third from Bombay to Guntakal and finally , from Guntakal to Bengaluru. “My father worked for 15 years as a shop assistant. When he started, he was earning a salary of Rs 50 a year. Fifteen years later, he was making Rs 1,500 annually ,“ says Jain. “He then joined another man as a working partner and set up his own shop.“

The soft-spoken Jain studied in Chickpet, in the local Bharathi Vidyashala school. You can still find the school on Google Maps, but it shut down long ago. There were no students. “I grew up here. My family lived upstairs. From our roof you could see all the way up to Mysore Bank circle. Now, though...“ He trails off.

Jain moved to Jayanagar in 2000. “What could we do?“ he asks. “There is no infrastructure. Where are the schools? Where are the hospitals? My cousin had a heart attack a little over a year ago. He needed urgent medical care. But there were no hospitals nearby , and the local autos refused to stir. In the end, a traffic policeman had to flag down a passing autorickshaw so that we could get him medical care.“

The Rajasthani community is well represented in Chickpet, and has been for a long time. When asked if there have been any
clashes of cultures, Jain smiles. “Never,“ he says. “Karnataka is Rama Rajya. We have always got along with our Kannadiga neighbours. Very good people.“

Sweet Smell of Success

The Gundappa Hotel in Nagarathpet has a reputation for high quality sweets and savouries. It's 85 years old, and dates back to even earlier than that, when 12-year-old Gundappa was thrown out of his home by his parents who thought the boy would amount to little. Gundappa left his village, Hulikunte, and made his way to the city , with little more than a few utensils. He got his start as a sidewalk hawker of sweets, before becoming popular enough to set up his own store, says his grandson Pradeep.

Over the years, the shop grew, and gained a reputation for quality at affordable prices. “It became a practice on salary days for employees at the offices in the area ­ the State Bank of Mysore, LIC and other companies, to come to the bank on the first of every month, withdraw money and come straight here to buy Mysore Pak to take home to their families,“ he says.

The savouries are crisp and spicy . The badam milk is delicious. “We sell around 10kgs of sweets daily , and around 20 kgs a day during the first week of the month,“ says Pradeep. “We limit ourselves to that, because if you increase the quantity, the quality goes down.“

The exodus

If there is one thing peté residents agree upon, it's that the place is becoming unliveable. “Sewage leaks into our wells, into our drinking water. The government is here for tax collection,“ says Jain. Sajjanraj Mehta, the former president of the Karnataka Hosiery and Garment Association, won't go quite that far, but he agrees that doing business in the area has become increasingly difficult. “We want our roads to be ­ well ­ like Tendersure roads. Instead, we have ... what we have,“ he says. “There are around 15,000 traders here. The Central Business District is a huge source of revenue for the government ­ more than other areas like Commercial Street or Brigade Road. But infrastructure remains an issue. I have customers coming to me from all over Karnataka, and they laugh at the state of the roads.'Come to Chitradurga,' one of them told me,'and I will show you better roads than the ones you have in Bengaluru'“.

“Water is another problem, as is sewage. The pipes here were laid during the time of the British, and haven't been changed since,“ says Varadaraju. “Is it any surprise that people prefer to leave and rent out their properties?“ he asks. “If you can get rents of anywhere between Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 a month for a 700 sq feet property, why wouldn't you rent it out?“ asks Banashankar.